


Rescue

by thecarlysutra



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Making Up, Pepper Potts as Rescue, Pepper Potts is a bona-fide badass, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Tony builds things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 19:05:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6820444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/pseuds/thecarlysutra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Funny you're the broken one when I'm the only one who needed saving. </p><p>Post-<i>Civil War</i>. A sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6812551">then I will take the chain from off the door</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescue

  
“I'm not really the advice type,” Natasha says. She is sitting on the bed in Pepper’s room, watching Pepper remove every item of clothing from her closet, hold it against her body, and throw it to the floor. 

Pepper frowns at her reflection in the full length mirror. The suit is too dark, too starched. She'll look like she's going to a funeral. 

“Well, I need help,” Pepper says. She sighs at the white sweater she's auditioning, and throws it to the pile. “Clearly.”

Natasha rises from the bed. Pepper watches her poke through the closet, her face pinched with concentration. 

“Don't put too much thought into this,” Natasha says. “Be cool.”

Natasha hands her a light blue dress. Pepper studies it against her body in the mirror. Maybe. 

“I have never in my life been cool,” Pepper says. 

Natasha makes an expression that Pepper takes as agreement. Pepper hands the blue dress back, accepts a striped sweater and black cigarette pants. 

“He's not going to be cool, either,” Natasha says, and her eyes slide away when Pepper searches her face for explanation. 

Pepper wishes she knew what Natasha knows, and then she doesn't. She decides on the striped sweater and cigarette pants, nods at her reflection. She exhales slowly, tries not to decipher Natasha's expression of the mirror. 

***

They meet at a bar in the airport. Pepper sees him first: he is looking down at his cocktail napkin, his fingers drumming restlessly atop it. Not a good sign. He is wearing a grey summer weight suit with wrinkles between the shoulders; his hair slants slightly to one side, like he's just woken from sleeping on it. She doesn't think she's ever seen him so unkempt. 

Pepper forces a smile, walks up to the bar. “Tony.”

He starts, one hand balling the napkin reflexively. He looks at her, stands. Looks at her some more. His face opens up with raw pain and naked need, a face at three a.m. woken from a nightmare. Pepper flinches. She wants what he wants, to hold him against her until that look bleeds from his face, but he doesn't move toward her, and she doesn't move toward him. 

“Pep,” he says, and twists his mouth into something she is sure is meant to be a smile. “You look--how about a drink?”

He holds out a chair for her, and she pulls herself up into it. Tony sits back down beside her, flicks the abused napkin into the well. He signals the bartender, orders a martini for her. Pepper shakes her head, asks for a coffee instead. Tony looks down at his own glass, what was probably a finger of whiskey and is now watered down with melted ice cubes, without a drink taken. 

Pepper settles her hands around her mug, the hot porcelain burning against her palms. The physical sensation is a welcome counterpoint to staring at Tony's face; it helps her with perspective. 

“How's Rhodey?” she asks into the absence of a safe topic. 

He nods over his scotch. “Better. He's better.”

She sent a card to the hospital, choosing one that said nothing about getting well, but instead just offered her love. 

Maybe that's the right play here, too. 

She places her hand over his, and he looks up at her. 

“Tell me what happened,” she says. 

“He fell.”

“No, Tony. Tell me what _happened_.”

He nods slowly. For a second, looks down at his drink, fingers drumming against the glass. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

***

He talks until he's hoarse, and Pepper grits her teeth to keep from crying. At parts, he can't look at her. He tells her about his parents with his eyes closed, and she exhales slowly, her throat burning. She just nods, because “I'm sorry” is wildly insufficient.  
When he's finished, she pulls him against her. His head nods against her neck. Her fingers thread through his hair, and she can feel him shudder beneath her hands. 

“Tony,” she says. 

He pulls up, looks her in the eye. 

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I didn't know how to stop.”

She remembers a newspaper headline she couldn't avoid after the bombing at the U.N. Tony's face above the fold, his eyes off the camera, the suit chipped and dented. He could have slipped through my fingers, she thinks. A dozen times in the past months she could have lost him, more. It was never about losing him to people in need, because how could he not choose millions of lives over hers? Would she love him if he could? It was about learning she'd lost him on the news, of no body to identify, the only thing left of him the pieces of shrapnel on her necklace, ringed with silver and set with diamonds. How he dressed things up for her. How many things were gold-plated lies. How he hid in his suits, and joked as he hammered out bullet holes. 

He was straight with her now, though, the recitation of every horrible thing that had happened while he was away. Pepper’s hands are still on him, the muscles in his shoulders tense beneath her touch. She waits for a moment for him to ask her to come home, for him to ask her to stay. Some honest plea softened with a joke at the end. 

He doesn't, though, so she nods to the exit, to the bustling airport outside, people running to catch their planes or running to press waiting loved ones into their arms, thank God you're home. 

“Let's get out of here,” she says. 

***

Natasha could still be at the apartment, so Pepper directs the cab to Tony's new place in Malibu. The glass doors move beneath her touch; she misses Jarvis welcoming them home. Tony has been tinkering with the AI; he can't get it right. 

She's met Vision. He calls her Miss Potts. 

Tony just enters the house like he's never been there before, like he's unsure where the exits are. She leads him to the bedroom. 

There are deep bruises on Tony's chest. Pepper recognizes the shape of the arc reactor ringing his heart. She wonders how he got out of Siberia once his suit was destroyed. Doesn't ask, though she's sure now that he'll tell her. 

She pulls him into the bed, presses him to the mattress. It's quiet, his hands around her waist as she rides him. If it hurts him, he doesn't say anything. It hurts her, but not in the same way. She recognizes that they're saying goodbye to something. Losing things is always painful. They'll never be these people again. 

***

Tony offers to leave the new place in Malibu. To leave the lab shuttered and dark, the line of suits edging the walls forever forgotten. 

She can't ask him to do that, and she realizes that she doesn't want to. 

“Make me a suit,” she says. 

***

The new suit is red and gold, just like Mark 2. She watches as he carefully screws in the arc reactor. Her arc reactor. 

She is still the first time the suit builds itself around her, unable to breathe. The interface opens up before her eyes, and she sucks in the filtered air. She can see so much. 

He teaches her to fly. He watches from the ground as she sputters up to the sky, nervous about the thrusters at first. Tony has built in fail-safes; the suit will catch her if she falls. It's a little difficult to trust at first, but soon the fear fades and she tears into the sky. She's never seen anything so blue. 

Tony is waiting on the ground when she floats back down, his eyes still on her. They never left. 

He teaches her to control the blasters. How to aim the missiles. He's patient, but she learns quickly. 

He implants the sensors under her skin. It's a new feeling, being part machine, and she gets used to it sooner than she anticipates. Tony teaches her to call the suit. She beckons and it wraps around her. It's familiar. It feels like home. 

There's a problem in Bosnia. She expects hand wringing, but Tony just meets her eyes and asks if she's ready. She says yes, and together they rise into the air.  



End file.
